


The Pure Drop

by Fluterbev



Series: The Irish Saga [4]
Category: The Sentinel
Genre: M/M, Music, St. Patrick's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-17
Updated: 2008-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:34:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fluterbev/pseuds/Fluterbev
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fourth story in the Irish Saga. It's Paddy's Day. Jim and Blair go out to enjoy some authentic Irish culture, then go home to enjoy each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pure Drop

Blair had always found St. Patrick’s Day to be a bit of an anti-climax since he’d moved to Ireland. The green beer that’d prevailed in Cascade’s Irish theme pubs, as well as the atonal renderings of ‘Danny Boy’ and ‘The Unicorn Song’, were entirely absent in this part of the world. In fact, he’d never actually met anyone in Ireland who even knew ‘The Unicorn Song’, thoroughly un-Irish adoptee in Irish-American culture as the ditty had turned out to be.

As an American adoptee in a foreign culture himself, and while living in Dublin during the first four years he spent in Ireland, Blair had annually thrown himself into the Paddy’s Day celebrations that Ireland’s capital had to offer. He’d gone to stand among the crowd which lined the streets to watch the obligatory parade, resplendent with marching bands and carnival floats decked in green, white and gold, and afterwards he’d found himself drinking overpriced pints of Guinness – most definitely black, not green – in the trendy pubs around Temple Bar. There he’d discovered an Ireland that was not quite Ireland, for all its sociable hilarity – it turned out that he’d mostly been in the company of Germans, fellow Americans and English lads over for a stag party. And when the drunken strains of ‘Danny Boy’ had, indeed, rent the air, Blair had been unable to shake the conviction that he was doing it _wrong_.

Paddy’s Day up in Co. Louth, where Blair had come to live several months ago was, by contrast, a muted affair. It was a national holiday and, like almost everyone else he knew, Blair had the day off – which seemed to be the most exciting thing about it for the majority of his co-workers. Dundalk, like most of the other small towns in the region, boasted no parade, and the shops were all shut. The pubs were open, though; so, wanting to show Jim a bit of the real Ireland he’d discovered five years down the line, Blair dragged his friend out into town just after lunch.

McManus’ bar was pretty empty, with just one or two die-hards propping up the bar and the strains of The Corrs – AKA local family made good - issuing from the jukebox. Jim eyed the sparse proceedings with a raised eyebrow, but didn’t seem too bothered by the lack of festivities. Instead he bought them a round: “A pint and a glass,” he asked for, his ready adoption of local turns of phrase making Blair smile. Farmer Jim, third generation Irish as he was, was really beginning to come into his own.

They went to sit in the window seat while they waited for their Guinness to settle; no quick pouring in this establishment - it’d be delivered to their table when it was done and not before. While they waited, Blair launched into his usual spiel when cultural events of note were taking place. “You know, there’s a theory that it wasn’t actually the snakes that Saint Patrick drove out of Ireland, but the pagans. It’s all to do with the cult of Crom Cruich. Hey, in fact, I should take you over to Ballymagauran in Cavan sometime, and show you where the cult used to worship…”

Jim just watched him indulgently out of the corner of his eye, and eventually Blair stopped mid-flight. “What?” he said irritably.

Jim shrugged, looking infuriatingly superior. “You’re trying too hard, Chief,” he said. “Relax, huh? I don’t need you to be a tour guide all the time.”

Only slightly stung by the criticism – Jim’s protests that he talked too much were usually only token ones, and Blair had made it a lifelong habit to ignore them – the continuance of his lecture was interrupted anyway by the arrival of their drinks. And a few moments after that it turned out there was to be entertainment in the offing after all, when a couple of people Blair recognised from Ravensdale came in, instrument cases in their hands.

It was one reason Blair liked this pub – McManus’ was a bar where the local traditional music crowd seemed to hang out, although frequently the timing of their sessions seemed to have no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Blair had not actually known there would be any music here today, since it had not been advertised anywhere he’d seen it. He suspected it was most likely an ad hoc arrangement, and that the musicians simply relied on the local grapevine, calling each other whenever one or two of them was in the mood to meet up and play. He decided to indulge his curiosity, and ask one of the ones he recognised if they were there specifically to celebrate St Patrick’s Day.

The guy he’d asked shrugged his shoulders. “We’re not really here because of that,” he said, as he took his bow from its case and rosined it up. “It’s just that we’re all off work today. Any opportunity for a tune!”

It seemed that the easy-going sentiment was shared by quite a few others. As fiddles and flutes were taken out and tuned over pints and chat, more musicians arrived; their instrument cases and chatter filling the small bar. Eventually Jim and Blair relinquished their seats, it clearly being the appropriate etiquette to do so when there was music to be played and an increasing number of people in a confined space to play it. The session commenced, the music – all instrumental, not a ‘Danny Boy’ or a unicorn in sight – lively, fast and rhythmic.

As Blair and Jim stood on the fringes, Blair was in seventh heaven. _This_ was the Paddy’s Day he’d been looking for back in Dublin – the real thing, undistilled by shamrocks and green paint. A natural, organic expression of Irishness; a celebration of the richness of this island’s culture in its purest, natural setting.

At some point when it was his partner’s round again, perhaps because Jim had picked up on his enthusiastic desire to be a part of this, Blair’s glass of Guinness had mysteriously increased to a full pint, and Jim’s pint had been demoted to Ballygowan. It seemed that Farmer Jim was driving them home – eventually. In the meantime, however, Blair stood close to Jim, bopping a little and basking in the atmosphere as the music raised the roof. And when his attention wasn’t on the music there was conversation and laughs to be had with the other people standing around in the bar, and the indulgent eyes of the man he loved upon him at intervals when Jim wasn’t similarly engaged in having the craic.

Eventually, as the day drifted into evening every bit as seamlessly as one reel segued into another, Jim slung a companionable arm over Blair’s shoulders. “Hey Chief,” he drawled, and Blair grinned at the easy, relaxed tone of his partner’s voice, liberally spiked with something a whole lot spicier. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot,” Blair agreed, his arm creeping around Jim’s waist in turn.

The other man pulled him close, his hot puffs of breath warm against Blair’s ear. “You got any Irish in you?” Jim murmured silkily.

Blair chuffed a laugh. “You know I don’t,” he said. “It’s you with the Irish ancestry, man.”

Jim chuckled, his lips wetly brushing the curve of Blair’s lobe and making him shudder. “Do you want some?” he asked suggestively.

“Jim!” All-too conscious of their very public location – and while they didn’t exactly hide the fact they were a couple, some discretion was necessary in a place like this - Blair pushed him away. “I think it’s time to go, buddy,” he said, his spine tingling with anticipation. “Looks like you’ve had too much of the hard stuff!”

Jim saluted Blair with his glass of sparkling water, his eyes twinkling. “Or maybe,” he noted enigmatically, pushing the double entendre for all he was worth, “not enough!” He winked. “You gonna give me some hard stuff when we get home, Sandburg?”

Blair rolled his eyes. But he wasted no time in hustling Jim out of there, anyway.

Not long afterwards, lying sated and relaxed beside Jim in bed, Blair pushed himself up onto one elbow and looked down at the man he loved. The blind in here was open, the nearly-full moon and remaining half-light of evening illuminating the white-painted walls of the room with an almost ethereal glow; and under that light Jim’s skin looked almost luminous, shining with health and sweat, his chest heaving with the aftermath of exertion. His eyes were closed, his cheeks flushed. Blair thought that he’d never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

Jim cracked open an eyelid and peered at him quizzically. “Haven’t I tired you out, yet?” he asked, in a voice filled with mock-exhaustion. Okay, Blair had to admit that maybe some of it was probably real exhaustion – Jim had certainly given his all a moment ago.

“Don’t interrupt, man,” Blair told him in response, smoothing a hand in a decreasing spiral over Jim’s flawless, smooth pectoral, and reducing the focus of its meandering to a hard little nub of a nipple, which he _pinched_. “I’m busy having a religious experience, here.”

Jim didn’t respond. But after a few moments of being the focus of dedicated worship, during which Blair brought his mouth into play as well, he admitted breathily, “Yeah, me too.”

Their movements after that were slow and unhurried, the urgent heat of their earlier coupling transmuted into something altogether more profound and reverent. This dance was ageless and they both knew it well; a two-hand reel in which neither Jim nor Blair led or followed, but instead both undulated in concert with each other; pushing, pulling, sliding, pressing. The music which led them was achingly soulful; a minor-keyed reel resonant of joy and tragedy in equal measure, imbued with the sum total of their lives and everything that they were to each other. And at its culmination it was not a crescendo that they reached, but rather a pinnacle of harmonic perfection. Every note in tune, every step in time, every breath and ecstatic cry merging in convulsive, melodic synchronicity.

It was fully dark by the time Blair found breath to speak. Snuggling close to his partner's hot, beloved bulk, he pulled the comforter over them both and murmured, “Happy Saint Patrick’s Day, Jim.” The snore which answered him made him grin. And a moment later, he joined in the chorus.

 

_End_


End file.
